Uwabami
by yllw-drgnfly
Summary: There were no plans, no plots or grand schemes. She had no desire to change this world; just to survive in it. Can she even do that, though, when the rules of this alternate dimension shackle her to a man so bent on destroying so much of it? si!oc soulmate!au
1. Prologue

It starts off...

Well, it starts off like every other traumatic event, she imagines.

It starts with shock.

It starts with thoughts sloshing wildly between her ears, then draining until her head is empty and hollow. Her mind turns cold, sterile, detached from the world around her, completely separating from what little emotion she retains.

It starts with a wail as loud as any before, and then heavy sobbing and hiccups and more screeching. It's a mess in there but there's nothing that can be done. The shrill screams die out slowly, and all that is left is the low, sorrowful wheezing of a man left behind.

It starts with infinite pools of poisonous purple, surrounded by skin a shade too light and topped with a head of thin, flat strands of cream-colored hair. Everyone calls her names or shys away from her, no matter age or occupation.

It starts with…

It starts off with pain, sharp and dull, burning and icy, deep and superficial. It crawls through her bloodstream and sinks into her bones before rising to the surface and staining her too-light skin dark. Her chakra whips wildly around her but no one from the packed marketplace below seems to even notice, not even the shinobi.

It starts with a kunai which fits too well into the palm of her hand, an endless energy flowing through invisible veins and rising too eagerly to her call. She excels in every class and they crown her with a terrible title: prodigy.

Truly, though, it starts with a young girl of twenty-six stepping off the edge of the curb right in front of a speeding semi and taking the budding life in her stomach with her.


	2. Chapter 1

Out of habit, Iroha scratched at the expansive scar which covered the skin across her shoulderblade, over her shoulder and down to her collarbone, its long, spindly fingers creeping up the side of her neck and jaw. Her hands were cold, soothing the permanent heat of the bone-deep burn marks and easing the little sparks of anxiety that skittered up her spine. There were too many people in the room for any real shinobi to feel comfortable and she was no different. A sense of unease had her checking every exit, even the windows and the panels of the ceiling.

Iroha's teammates seemed almost as equally unwell, though they did well at hiding it beneath their idle chatter. She believed it to be a product of their time spent together at the Academy that Ritsuka and Yajirou worked as a well-oiled machine despite their new replacement teammate. She hated them a bit for that, she supposed, but it really wasn't important enough to occupy her for long.

Especially with…him…in the room.

There was no way that she would look at him, of course, but that didn't detract at all from the fact that she could feel him in there with them. She felt his presence almost as clearly as she could feel her own chakra and that was more than a little frightening. His aura roiled and washed over her like a bath of hot oil, sinking into every nook and cranny and all but suffocating her in its lethal toxicity. She would not run, though; running would get her killed.

Ritsuka made a half-hearted effort to include her into the conversation between himself and their teammate, but Iroha merely smiled thinly at him and swept her eyes across the doorways again. She would not be getting close to these two; they were disposable--only to be used as a step towards becoming a chunin. It was bad enough that she was only now taking the exam at age sixteen, but certain circumstances--namely the deaths of her previous genin teammates--had prevented it before now. She would be damned if she didn't get through it this time, though.

Another sweep of the entrance had Iroha pausing, however, as a nostalgic commotion quieted the whole room. She averted her eyes after a single, too-long moment.

Morino began the exam in the same familiar way she remembered and she and her teammates, along with everyone else, were seated and told to begin. Not wanting to be an outlier, Iroha covertly copied the page of answers from the long-haired Oto kunoichi in front and to the left of her by mimicking the girl's pen motions. She didn't complete the entire written exam this way, just enough to earn herself six points. Rather, she spent her remaining time checking up on her teammates and making sure they were doing well enough, which, surprisingly, they were.

Time was called without much fanfare, though the introduction of the tenth question caused a bit of a ruckus. Mitarashi came in like a wrecking ball, shattered bits of glass raining around her and many of the genin getting a mild scare. The proctor gave them all twenty minutes to prepare for the next exam before dismissing herself with more ominous words about the next phase.

Iroha rose from her seat and wandered over to where her temporary companions had already met up near the front of the classroom. She did not look around much anymore at this point, already making notes on who had failed the written exam as they were kicked out. It was, for the most part, as she remembered, with the addition of a curious redhead with glasses and her team. Perhaps she hadn't noticed the girl in the exams so long ago?

"We should split up--it'll be faster if we all prepare separately and just meet somewhere." Ritsuka nodded along in confirmation of Yajirou's observation and Iroha herself merely dipped her head in agreement. Proud of himself and his team's easy following of his direction, the boy smiled faintly.

"Meet at our spot," Ritsuka questioned with a glance at her. The spot he referred to, Iroha presumed, was the training ground they had met at a few times before the exams. It wasn't a bad idea, so she just nodded discretely this time, Yajirou clapping his friend on the arm before they all started to leave.

Iroha almost thought she felt eyes on her back as she closed the door behind her.


End file.
